Indian players may be missing in the South Africa’s Global T20 league, but an Indo-Pak rivalry is still alive here in the rainbow nation. Moreover, the league, scheduled to start from November 3 this year, could also be termed as mini Indian Premier League (IPL).

The owners of IPL teams, Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils, have bought two franchises in Cape Town and Johannesburg but the striking thing is five teams out of eight in this league are owned by Indians. There are also a couple of franchises owned by Pakistanis. Benoni Zalmi and Durban Kalandars have owners from Pakistan and this was surely given the league India-Pakistan flavour.

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Nelson Mandela Bay Stars team is owned by Dubai based businessman Ajay Sethi whereas Bloem city Blazers belongs to Hong Kong based Sushil Kumar. Another franchise Pretoria based Mavericks have their owners from India who is the UK based Hiren Bhanu.

However, the Durban Qalandars which is owned by Pakistani Fawad Rana from Lahore has thrown an open challenge to GRM’s Johannesburg’s Team. “Both Durban and Johannesburg are age old rivals. But the real rivalry is now between Lahore and Delhi,” Qalandar’s owner said. The comments must have surely livened up the unique Indo-Pak rivalry between the franchises now although the players from the respective teams won’t be playing.

Global T20 league player auction drafts

On Sunday, August 27, the main player auction drafts took place that saw 32 international players and 96 local players being picked up by the 8 participating franchises. Every franchise picked up 16 players each to make up their squad. Chris Morris, the Proteas all-rounder, was the first cricketer to be picked on the day. He was snapped by Durban Qalandars.

The team owners admitted that their job wasn’t to pick the side, they left that responsibility to the team of professionals. The quality of cricket is expected to be high as many cricket stalwarts including AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn are taking part in this league.